


pearlized and tidal

by Goose_Boy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Creature Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Falling In Love, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Supernatural Elements, post movies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:35:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23389627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goose_Boy/pseuds/Goose_Boy
Summary: "It was beautiful.”The watercolor sky became a rich violet, lush and deep where it touched that pink. Darcy smiled at her then, something a little wistful, like a secret.“Tell me about it?”
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Wanda Maximoff, James "Bucky" Barnes/Pietro Maximoff
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mukur0](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mukur0/gifts).



> this wasn't supposed to have chapters. this was supposed to be a one and done maybe 2k piece, and instead, this problem happened.

_ If the bards of old the tru has told _

_ The sirens have raven hair. _

_ But over the earth since art had birth, _

_ They paint the angels fair. _

― L.M. Montgomery

  
  


She felt him before she heard him, livewire pulse in the back of her throat and snow flurry hush to her synapses like the first brush of the sun after a storm, she'd gotten so used to being  _ without _ that even now, months later, that feeling made her chest clench and threaten to cave. Familiar footfalls, a gait she knew as well as her own, he sidled up next to her with an arm thrown over her shoulders and a seamless press of his body against hers. As if their rhythm had never suffered, as if her world hadn't ended with his selfish show of compassion only for the universe to spit him back out years later when people came back from where the dust had taken them.

"You're thinking again."

Words given to her temple, affection crushed Sokovian murmured into the spill of her hair. Senseless, she reached up with her left hand and caught his where it dangled over her shoulder, their fingers laced and her smile easy, private. Intimacy like she had never managed with another, taken and held with grasping palms and greedy fingers as if something may try to take him away again. She knew their dependency just as she knew the burning want to turn her head and sew his heart into place beside hers so he couldn’t be lost again. 

Wanda tucked herself a little tight to his side instead, substituted and replaced and forcefed herself a mimicry of what she couldn't have and tried to convince herself it was enough.

"They're training the new recruits today."

Chuffing sound tangled up between his chest and his throat but the meaning was all the same, sharp tongued and sarcastic and biting like Americans always took such insult from. She knew better, knew him when he got lost in translation and his mouth would curl into a tempered sneer, self deprecating before it was ever meant to be cruel. 

"Perfect, we get to have some fun for a change."

" _ Behave." _

Guttural laughter pressed to her pulse, fingers clenching around hers until she could feel the beat of her heart in then, Pietro leaned heavy against her. Stance adjusted to hold his weight, she didn't stagger under the fall of him and instead Wanda just grinned behind the illusion of her own carefully pasted on manners.

"Like you don't want to fuck with them! Think about it, they sleep sometime, what better training than this?"

"Psychological warfare  _ does _ sound appealing."

He felt real when he laughed like that, visceral and grasping at her and her heart burned in her chest, her lungs ached with an underwater crush. This was what she had been missing, tried to replace with Vision and Steve, friendships and attempts at something that had turned to ash and been lost to time. None of them had been Pietro, and none of them had been able to fill and mend the festering abyss that he had left in her hollow bird bones. 

“Alright, psychological warfare.” Quiet footfalls, leaves crunching underfoot as he guided them along away from the outdoor training field. He’d always done that, led her away from the things that took her attention for too long and hand held her back to their shared reality. He did so now, their heads pressed close despite the privacy that the wooded path provided as if every breath and word shared was a precious secret and Wanda hummed into their lifelong song and dance. “We have to start small then. Inconspicuous. They can’t know they’re being hazed, that takes the fun right out of it.”

“What’s the point if  _ we’re _ not having fun?”

_ “Exactly.” _

The trees caught her laughter, pressed it into their leaves until her magic made them curl, bloom and bleed until their green flickered autumn tinged and sunset burning. Everything trembled like chimes in the wind and their bodies rocked together as they walked. He didn’t hesitate to lean against her, wind their way down the path and feed conspiratory plans against her hair. They hadn’t needed such secrecy in years, not really, not for something so innocent by comparison when they hadn't had the time between protests and revolutions and dying to some degree, but Pietro made her feel like the girl she had lost the chance to be. 

“We could always wipe them from the armory.”

“Scramble their mess hall identification.”

“Why would we eve-”

“Who are they going to charge if they all use the same account?”

“You don’t mean t-”

“Think about i-”

“Who should we bill it t-”

“You know exactly.”

“ _ Him _ ?”

“Who else?”

“Strange though? Isn’t that-”

“Strange? I happen to think it’s fitting.”

“You  _ would _ .”

The walk back was bubbling laughter, minutes passed and spent with sharp tongued Sokovian between them made sweet summer soft by the dimpled way he grinned, the way she laughed. Only a few months back but she still grasped at him with both hands, desperate and fretful and terrified that he would sift away in a swirl of ash just as she had. Nothing would be the same now that she knew what it was like to be without him, knew that collar just as she knew the death crush crumble of her being, she couldn't lose him again.

She wouldn't lose him again, and the snarling, caged creature that had paced inside her since the Raft bared its teeth.

Pietro laughed like he could sooth away all the jagged edges she had become, but Wanda didn't care a single bit about the too sharp cut of her bones anymore. They fit together perfectly now, all crackled bits seamed together until they breathed as one and she clutched at his hand as they wandered the path back to the compound.

-

This time of day, the conservatory in the north wing was usually empty. It should have been at least, personal occupied with various tasks like training or management, experiments that she understood but didn't talk about. Their father had been a brilliant man and though his children had learned much, only her brother has pursued his education since returning. Pietro who had left her to beg off for the labs, she could practically taste his need to bury himself in theoretical texts and equations, brain devouring numbers at an inhuman speed. 

Left alone with her own devices, she had wandered for the glass encased room where everything was quiet, nothing but trees and books and soft places that she could fold herself into until the sun shifted in the sky and the solar lights kicked on. An easy solace and a simple reprieve, but there was something impossible then in that moment, that footfall just before the closed doors. And perhaps it was just her enhancements playing tricks on her, magic turned inward until it cannibalized her like it had threatened to do with that collar and that cell, but the sound of soft singing was unmistakable. 

Lush and curling, champagne bubbling deep into her blood until everything became soft at the edges. Like she could breathe for the first time in months, years, a pulsing call like a hook in her abdomen that tugged and twisted and sewed itself in with dopamine laced kisses. Hand on the door before she realized, it snapped open harder than she had intended as she stumbled into it and Wanda knew only that singing. Full bodied and throaty, a smoky and tidal pool deep until she breathed in into her lungs and-

"Fuck!"

Trick of the light, illusion from sleep deprivation and magic she couldn't control, her friends eyes looked like shimmering suntouched opals for a fleeting second. There and gone just like the singing, nothing but Darcy with her bare feet and a spilled jar of paint water on the floor. It seeped and spread even as the other woman bolted to her feet, left wet prints where her toes had been as she scurried across the room for some paper towel from the sink to mop it all up with. Greens and blues, watercolors that bled and thinned and threatened to stain the wood even as Darcy did her best to clean the mess up.

"The two of you're going to give me a heart attack one of these days."

Trilling words with a little bit of laughter and a little bit of something else, Darcy drifted by her with wet feet to stamp the towels into the mess she'd made. It had bled from her paper, washed away all the cool colors until nothing but slashes of brown remained and Wanda felt the strangest urge to fall to her knees. To press her cheek against one soft thigh and expose the delicate throb of her pulse for the other woman to have. And maybe it was that sea froth feeling, that otherworldly foam plush she could feel still popping in her lungs, but there was something, something-

She'd ruined Darcy's painting.

The sky and the trees had lost all their color save for their skeletal trunk as it washed to the floor and Wanda mourned the loss of a piece she hadn’t even seen.

“ _ Jebati _ , I’m so so-”

“It happens.” A shoulder shrugged at her, a little dismissive even with all the humor caught in the other woman’s voice but Wanda went to her knees beside her all the same. Soft glow of red across the floor and the colorful puddle that had spread seeped back into the little pile of paper towels. Spunged up and pulled from the wood before it could stain the grain, but she still hated to watch all the color leave. “Best part about water color is that it's never permanent.”

Spoken with a red lipped smile and sweet dimples and Darcy blinked heavy lidded ocean eyes at her. 

“What was it?”

Curiosity, every piece a blossom of color and a moment that she hadn’t seen, but Darcy spent hours of her free time in various rooms about the compound with more brushes and jars than her arms could hold. Paint smears across her cheeks and her bare things, her soul felt like Steve’s in a way, polished like a river stone and awash with a delicate, intensive wonder. They weren’t the same, they never would be, but she couldn’t deny the finger brush way they touched through life. 

“The forest this morning. It was all foggy and soft.”

She would have sat there from the early hours then, painted as the sun sifted through the trees from the east, a moment of solitude in the predawn hush. A startled jerk and the entire moment had been lost, swept away like soapsuds on washed hands and Wanda watched as Darcy listed to the side enough to cross her legs. Like she had hours still to sit on the floor and at ease like precious time hadn’t just been wasted. 

Pale fingers hovered over her paint tubes before taking up a brilliant red. Little dollop in one of the empty wells of her palate all amidst the blues and greens that didn’t exist on the paper anymore, hesitation before she used a fat water filled syringe to dump a few drops into the well. For all that the fog had left the air and taken its soft chill with it, everything was green and crisp outside. None of the bloody color made liquid in its too small well, but Wanda hugged her knees and watched with her chin on one as Darcy took a brush dipped in water and splashed nonsensical patterns into the deepest point of the forest. 

“Head loud?”

Spoken soft and with the freely given love of someone who had never let their pain get the better of them, and Darcy asked because she cared. Wanda knew that, no ulterior motive to be found between the woman’s fingers and no dastardly secrets on her skin. Just a genuine curiosity and paint that she would possibly forget to wash off that night, but that bubbling champagne listing sat on the back of her tongue still and she leaned a little into the way the other woman watched her. Affection had always tasted like salt water taffy when it came from Darcy, rich and almost cloying sweet.

Simple, almost distracted sentences, but she had always managed to get right to the point. Bit in a little too fast, held on a little too hard, Wanda would have thought it practiced if she didn’t know the kind of people this little woman willingly spent her time with. Certainly one had to have a certain amount of well meant bite to them to be able to constantly handle Barnes with all of his self destructive and his soot shaded brand of righteous. 

Darcy meant well, and it wasn’t fair that all Wanda wanted to do was try to see how their hands might fit together. 

“I thought...” Brow furrowing, watching the way another brush took some of the red paint and dragged it through the vague outline of leaves and silhouettes until it spread like a sticky fire. Never had she seen trees that color but Darcy swept the color across the paper like it was exactly what she wanted. Mixed all up in the water and it fanned out, crawled with curling tendrils of color even as she used that same brush to transfer paint to two different wells. Tiny blop of black paint added to one until the red went sanguine, deep and almost dirty in its color. It too touched to the paper at the very deepest point in the cropping of trees, became shadowed and heavy as it blended in places with the bold red. “I...”

She knew what she had thought, she knew what she had heard. Singing so rich it had spilled into her blood until she didn’t want to bother to breathe, but she didn’t remember moving even though her feet had taken the steps. Her hand had pushed at the door in search of whatever had called her, but she found only Darcy instead. Only Darcy, as if she could ever be  _ only _ anything. 

A touch to the bridge of her nose, fingertip slid along the slope from the start between her eyes to the faint upturn at the end. Slick trail of water in its wake, the other woman drew her back in just before she could spiral and wander all over again. Like she had taken lessons that Pietro hadn’t been there to offer, the two would have been fast friends if ever her brother could let go of some of his heavy guard. One lifted brow and something almost expectant in her eyes, she had traded her deep paints for a warm yellow, full bodied and made so thin Wanda could see through it in its little well. 

“I thought I heard singing.”

Lips pressed together, cheeks a bit puffed, her expression was almost childish but Darcy nodded all the same. All wide eyes and barely contained mirth, Wanda felt her own mouth pull at a pout before she could help herself. Because she knew better, and her friend knew better, but that didn’t make that honey tongued ringing in her ears any less real. 

“And I’m sure it was great singing, but it certainly wasn’t from in here.”

“I never sai-”

“You  _ literally _ magicked the door in because you thought you heard singing. My family will warn you, I am the most tone deaf, haven’t been allowed to sing since I broke a mirror when I was seven.”

Flicker of red against Darcy’s shoulder and she swayed with the shove, lost what ever hold she had on herself and laughed instead. Rich and crackling and unfettered like no laughter Wanda had ever known growing up until it filled the glass room around them. Fat curls slipping on her shoulders and a bit of color to her pale cheeks, Darcy came alive with her joy just like she did everything else, and something in Wanda burned inside. She had put that color there, she had caused that laugh, her brother would never let her live this sort of thing down if she managed to find the words long enough to try and explain the feeling that this handful of a woman had planted in her chest. 

Unafraid and alive, Darcy laughed with the same lackadaisical touch that she gave to everything in life, and Wanda  _ burned _ .

“I swear I heard singing!”

“You’re so full of shit.”

Guttural sound, sharp and cutting and crawling in the back of her throat but Darcy just grinned. Like Wanda didn’t offend her, like she never had, and there was such a marvel in that that she still wasn’t sure what to do with. She let Darcy push her back instead, a hand on her shoulder that made her rock in place and hide the too wide of her grin against the cap of one knee. Sharp little fingers against her ribs that made her nearly squeal, smack out with a hand just to listen to another bout of that laughter. 

Eventually the laughter faded. Her soft sway stopped, gentle rocking motion lost on her bones as a delicate hush overtook them once more. Sunlight barely diluted through the tall panes of glass gave a wash of light to the floor, to both women where they sat in a carefully paned world all their own. Gossamer and gilded and she breathed in the quiet as Darcy’s trees bled out into a firelit orange and yellow, as their most outer edges became haloed in a thin, dazzling seep of pink. 

The same northern forest that she saw every day, just past the carefully trimmed courtyard and the pond that Pepper had had installed. Rain water filtered and cycled compound to be used for something before being given back to the environment, the woman had spent time making the facility as beautiful as it was state of the art. Yet, for all its lush greens and its deep tree lined paths, Wanda would have taken this fire and magic glazed version that Darcy crafted if ever given the chance.

“Maybe I am, but it was beautiful.”

The watercolor sky became a rich violet, lush and deep where it touched that pink. Darcy smiled at her then, something a little wistful, like a secret turned sour even as the air around her felt dampened, sad with every soft silent pulse. Like she knew something she wished she didn’t, a great burden held and carried and never forgotten even as she painted a world with fantasm aurora colors. It was beautiful, Darcy was beautiful for all that she felt as if she were ready to cry, a strange tight burning clench in the back of Wanda’s throat that she hated as soon as she knew it. 

“Tell me about it?”

Voice thick at the edges, charged with an emotion that she didn’t understand past the turbulent tidal spill of  _ too much _ at the edges of what made Darcy herself. Wanda had missed something. Wanda had  _ caused _ something, and all she wanted was to figure out how much force it would take to pull the shorter woman into the cradle of her thighs and keep her there. Then at least she would be safe, then at least Wanda could try to chase away that sadness with her arms and her affection and her heart that screamed that it didn’t want to have to stay in her chest when the person she wanted most sat right there. 

Except Darcy was sad, and even if Wanda didn’t know if she had been the cause, she could try to make it better. 

“It tasted like a rainstorm in the summer, when the air is so hot that everything steams.”

-

She had made the mistake once of calling Darcy  _ moja lutka _ .

That wasn’t to say that she only ever called her that  _ once _ , because Darcy was indeed a porcelain crafted and painted little doll. Bright eyes, a reddened mouth, rich curls and pale skin across a shapely form, Wanda was nothing if not observant and she enjoyed beautiful things when she saw them. But she wasn’t her brother, she didn’t make a habit of picking out those things and people to have a moment of fun just to scratch an itch for all that she knew Pietro craved more. They wanted stability, they needed some kind of shelter after the things they had seen and done, but Wanda was usually better versed at holding her tongue. 

She was usually better versed at holding her tongue near her brother. She knew well enough the kind of horrible tease he could be, but somewhere between his death and nobody that bothered to speak her mother tongue, she’d fallen slack. A little dreamy, a little caught up and tangled in a yawn and all she had meant to do was thank her friend for the sweet floral cup of tea that had been handed to her. And she had, thanked her that was, rather aptly she might add as if that mattered anymore. Clutched the mug with both hands and a sleep slow smile while a throb of deep red swept a fat curl behind one of Darcy’s ears, but she had called her  _ moja lutka _ and had seen the way her bloodhound of a brother had perked up.

There had been no escaping him since, a single, simple phrase,  _ my doll _ and suddenly every interaction had turned on its head. Like Pietro couldn’t get enough of it, teasing her about a woman that he barely held conversation with if only for the sake of watching his sister blush and scathe. 

If she didn’t love him so much she might just hurt him. As it were, well.

Nobody could find or fault her if a certain soldier started to ask Pietro to join him on his morning run. 

All was fair in love and war, and really, Barnes was actually rather easy to talk to. She didn’t understand what Pietro’s big hangup was.

-

“ _ Sestra _ .” Almost lazy drawl, the clatter of a tray slapped down beside hers broke her out of her revere. She startled a little, bread dropped into her thick bowl of soup when she hadn’t wanted to leave it there, Wanda watched it sink with a mournful little sound as her brother sat next to her. “My perfect,  _ wonderful _ , sister-”

“What did you do?”

It was good soup, a bowl larger than she really needed filled with more than she should have eaten at once. Wasteful, their mother would have scorned while tugging at a piece of her hair. Gluttony was a sin, their father would have reminded her as he divided that very bowl into enough to feed both his children and his wife. She had been hungry since she had been a little girl, hungier still since Strucker, and Wanda fed herself without guilt because if nothing else, she deserved to walk around with a full belly after everything she had lived through. 

Which meant she wanted to enjoy her soup, a thick, rich beef stew with large chunks of potatoes and carrots caught in its broth. More of a sludge than a broth, it cradled her bread rather than letting it sink even as it quickly turned liquid dark. Fingers catching it, pulling the sodden piece up to bite it off even as she stared at her brother with his too wide eyes and Wanda frowned. She wanted to enjoy her food, damn him, but Pietro had that look about himself like he had taken the last sweet biscuit at the orphanage and had never been so pleased. 

Survivalist habits after twenty...

“How old are we?”

He sat heavy, something in a pocket rattling and his drink threatening to tip. Different kind of wide eyed, gaping mouth with a question he didn’t know how to answer and Pietro just blinked at her across the little two person table. The same table they sat at every day for lunch, she didn’t know why she’d thought today would be any different but there sat her brother with a sandwich thick enough to constitute four, maybe five, and a befuddled expression on his poor face. She took a french fry out of spite, grievance compensation and that sort of thing but Pietro knew what he was getting into when he got sweet potato fries. He would never eat all of them anyway.

“I was-”

“Twenty-three when you died, I’m aware.”

“And you were-”

“Thirty-one, I’m also well aware.”

Frowning, heavy brow beneath his shock of blonde hair and he took her entire half loaf of brown bread just so he could bite off a chunk. Chew it with that same unsure, contemplative look on his face and there, she’d broken him for a few minutes all at the sake of having broken herself. 

“But we’re not?”

“No, so what-”

“I’m not sure, we could-”

“Birthday won’t exactly equate, we’ve lost eight-”

“Five-”

“Years. Maybe we could ask-”

“She could probably run some tests.”

Mouthful of bread as he chewed and chewed, sweet potato fries tasted exceptional when dunked in beef stew. Just salty enough, it wasn’t like he noticed that she pulled his plate to the middle of the table. Maybe he did, her bowl wobble walked up beside it by her own hands even as he pulled the two halves of his sandwich apart. Perhaps he had noticed then, or maybe this particular song and dance was nothing new, born out of a lifetime of sharing and going halfsies on things when they barely had enough for one. 

“What would we do without Helen?”

“Bleed out.”

Fair enough, he gave a half shrug with a piece of bread sopped down with stew and splatted a bit of it on the table. Point made then and Wanda chewed and chewed and chewed on too much roast beef as she watched him. Animated and breathing, she would take what she could get even if it meant him eating more of her stew than she had. 

“Forget our rabies shots-”

“Tetanus-”

“Bah, they do the same thing.”

Quiet sputter laughter into her lemonade and her chair rocked when his feet kicked out beneath the table. Glass tinked against his and she hooked her ankles around his shins, locked him into place like he minded. Pietro just took a long pull from his chocolate milk and ate more than his fair share of her soup like he had the right to it. 

“Psychological warfare?”

“The sweet tea has been replaced with chilled beef broth.”

_ “What?” _

“Yours is fine.”

“I don’t ha-”

“Your boyfriend’s is fine.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!”

Unimpressed, arched brows and cheeks full of roast beef that really needed an au jus or something to cut the utter amount of chew happening. The kitchen didn’t exactly take suggestions, and it wasn’t like her room didn’t have a kitchen she could use. This was just easier, and convenience came with its prices. It just meant she would make Pietro get her another lemonade before they were done. 

_ “Brate.” _

Simple scold around a mouthful of food and Pietro sank down into his seat, taking the bowl of soup with him as he slouched. 

“Shut up.”


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re going to stick to the chair.”

She shouldn’t have looked so pretty at seven in the morning. It wasn’t fair, not when Wanda could feel the sweat from her run clinging to her skin. Her leggings felt like they clung in all the wrong places, bit at a hip when she sat. Across the table from the other woman even if she wanted to run to her room for a shower, but they had a standing breakfast arrangement she refused to willingly break. 

It wasn’t like she wanted to ruin a perfectly good system, a steady breakfast partner was hard to come by. Pietro wouldn’t stop running for another hour at the earliest, heathen that never ate breakfast with a flimsy excuse that it upset his stomach. She knew better, knew how long it had taken her to get used to eating more than a single meal a day just like she knew the trembling relationship her little brother still held with it. So Wanda sat with her oatmeal and too many sausage links and pretended that she didn’t want to down a pitcher of water. 

“ _ Draga _ , you are far too chirper.”

Burgundy lush smile hidden behind a sugared scoop of grapefruit and Darcy watched her with ocean eyes beneath two perfect sweeps of eyeliner. She had been awake and aware long enough to get her makeup perfect and her hair artfully twisted and tucked up with a headband that looked like nothing more than two strings of pearls. Magic this early in the morning, the sort of witchcraft that women made look easy that Wanda had never understood for all that she had tried. Far flung concept of how to properly blend concealer, let alone how to contour her face without accidentally making herself gaunt, makeup was too expensive anyway. 

And then there sat Darcy, perfectly painted full lips and not a single hair out of place, grinning like Wanda had just made her morning. 

“Chipper.”

“ _ Bah _ ,” A sausage link stabbed and waved a little at the other woman like some kind of greasy threat. “Chipper, chirper, they are the same thing.”

Fork and serrated spoon held aloft with both of her hands in the air and Darcy’s shoulders shook when she laughed like that. The only thing about her then that didn’t fit the picture perfect image of a woman from a vintage edition of  _ Better Homes and Gardens _ , boisterous cackling that showed too many teeth and echoed with a sharp clap in the cafeteria around them. Not even five minutes and Wanda had made her laugh, made her laugh so hard that Darcy’s eyes did that pretty little crinkle curl at the corners. Made her feel a little less like she wanted to sweat-slide out of her own skin, and that at least was a win of some kind. 

Small victories, Steve had always said those mattered too. 

“They  _ aren’t _ , those are- Wanda, sweetheart.”

Brightest thing in the room, canary yellow dress snug in the bodice because Darcy had to have her things tailored. Flat little buttons in the same fabric low against the swell of her cleavage, she looked like the pretty little housewife from one of those old television shows. Demure and docile would never be good enough though, would never come close even if Wanda had never had the pleasure of watching the other woman play up the sharp tongued charm in a boardroom. 

“I’m not even going to argue with you right now.”

“I win.”

Little sniff and a mouthful of sausage but she nodded, leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs beneath the table. Barely kept her panic internalized at the way her leggings tried to cling to the seat, the way they cut into the meat of her thigh. Self satisfied smile instead even if she didn’t really feel it, one part apprehension at some sort of malfunction, one part pride and two parts distraction, she would get there in the end. Nowhere to try and race toward when the only woman she wanted to get caught up in sat across a little formica table looking like some sort of everyday Queen. 

“Did you traumatize your brother already?”

“I would nev-”

“Because you are in  _ rare _ form this morning. The last time you were this saucy you’d secured all the equipment in the annex gym to the ceiling.”

“I-” Fork falling a little, bitten sausage drooping back toward the table and Wanda squinted at her. Exhausted like she shouldn’t have been so early in the morning, her legs ached from where she’d even thought about trying to keep up with her brother. She had wanted to eat and catch her breath, not be called out for behavior that had occured a month ago. “Never thought you of all people would point a finger like that, I thought we were pa-”

Her breasts strained beneath the confines of her bodice when she learned forward like that, the swell of them distracting and unfair. Darcy had to know what she looked like, she had to know what she did to Wanda even as her throat clicked on a swallow. A little pained, a more than a little self incriminating but Wanda would be damned if she looked away from the sweep of Darcy’s mouth for her tits instead. 

“ _ Wanda _ ,” Her name wasn’t allowed to sound like that, sultry sort of croon that sent shivers down her spine. Barbed hook to her abdomen and she felt her inner muscles clench, thighs pressed together while Darcy looked at her like that. Said her name like that and made her insides threaten to turn molten. “We both know you did it.”

The sausage half hit the plate with a  _ plat _ , that wasn’t fair at all. 

Darcy wasn’t fair, not with how she laughed and shifted her weight to a single fist pressed to the underside of her chin. Little kick as she crossed her legs beneath the table, puff of her skirt and a flash of a white lacquered belt cinched tight about her waspish waist. Kind of woman Steve used to have sketchbooks full of, all coiled up and dolled up and Wanda wanted to know what it was like to put her hands there. The full of her ribs, the dip of her waist or the swell of her hips, she wanted to  _ touch _ . She gripped her fork tight instead and swallowed thickly. 

That was fine, she could deal with that, leg bouncing beneath the table as she stabbed the sausage again. 

“Do you have a meeting today?”

She deflated, shoulders drooping and her painted mouth pursing at the mere mention, evasive maneuvers at their finest and Wanda wished she’d kept her mouth shut. A little aggressive with her serrated spoon as she dug another chunk out of her grapefruit, sugar crystal crust broken again as Darcy stabbed at her food. Steve would have been so proud, foot in mouth and a moment ruined in a fashion that rivaled only his, but Steve wasn’t here for her to turn to for advice anymore. Couldn’t clasp her forearm and drag her out of a mess she’d made all by herself, and instead Wanda watched across the formica table that was suddenly too big as Darcy lost her playfulness and her sparkle like someone had covered the sunlamp that powered her. 

“Pepper’s in Tokyo at the moment and then she’s got a session in Hong Kong later this week where she needs to make an appearance, SI is all about promoting independence in the face of oppressive governmental regimes. I have opinions, but well, my Norwegian is better than hers.” There was sugar on her mouth, textured the otherwise perfect matte of her lipstick and Wanda forced another bite of her food when all she wanted was to lean across the table and see if she could lick it off. Because there was something there, that had to be, all of this couldn’t just be in her head for all that she kept floundering horrifically. “I have a meeting with Oslo at eight our time, which will put me at exactly at one their time. There’s no better time to get post middle aged white men to do what I want then when they’ve eaten too much and they’re ready to go home for the day.”

Almost bitter, curling on her tongue and soured like the tart from the grapefruit had sank into her blood. Darcy stabbed another bite out of her fruit and smiled, scathing and sharp and beautiful. She stacked her plates, little traces of cooled hollandaise smeared around as the little grapefruit stand was positioned to sit in the center, it was starkly meticulous in the wake of the soft burn of Darcy’s anger. She felt like a candle left unattended, precariously perched flame ready to spill over the side and set everything ablaze where she’d been left alone for too long. 

“Is that fun?”

She made that spoon look like a weapon, little metal teeth all twisted up along the edge of it, she could hurt somebody with that. Woman like Darcy, she could kill a man with that kind of spoon if she so much as put her mind to it, make it look like an accident in her pretty, perfect canary dress. 

Decorative little stand that held the grapefruit half aloft, half eaten and ready to be sugared again, Wanda watched as she twirled the spoon in her hand. Smile nowhere near as wide as it should have been, as soft and pleased as it should have been, but there was a smile and she had learned along the way that small victories were everything anymore. A smile got her through a few hours, a bout of laughter through a day, she could survive off of what she was given, but there was-

There was  _ something _ about the way Darcy smiled and cooed and cackled at her that felt like more. 

Felt an awful lot like a chance, a sunrise, like coming home when she hadn’t known what that word meant in so long it hurt. 

“They underestimate me. I’m a woman, I’m young, and I wasn’t here when the world went to shit. I don’t know most of the things that they went through, so they think I don’t know anything.” Spoon carefully, slowly stabbed into a section to pull out a complete little triangle of fruit, Darcy’s voice was smooth, full and soft and wrapped up in promises that Wanda wanted to taste. “They forget that I was on the ground when everybody had to rebuild, I watched people fall out of the sky and be hit by cars when they came back to places where the rest of the world had already moved on. I might not have been here when everybody had to try to pick up the pieces when there were missing, but I worked my ass off when we came back because somebody needed to and none of them would step up. I’ve been looking forward to this meeting for weeks.”

Sugar dusted on her lips, she sounded like power, furious and ferocious and ignored until she had become the vibrant kind of storm that Wanda had always been drawn to. 

“Do they have a chance?”

She hoped they didn’t just as much as she wished she could have been a shadow in that room while the meeting occurred, would have given anything to be able to stand out of sight and watch as Darcy worked a sort of magic that had always been mythical and foreign to her. She knew emotions even if she wasn’t sure what to do with her own, knew people's fears and their desires, the things that made them laugh just as quickly as they made them cry, but Darcy knew them on a different level entirely. She knew how to move them, how to empower and command and instruct them like Wanda would never be able to manage, some sterling compulsion until she had the masses eating out of her palm. 

“I hope not. I messed up somewhere i-”

Two flashes from the overhead lights spaced exactly five seconds apart and a low toning sound came from the ceiling. Friday didn’t even need to tell her what to do anymore, and Wanda would have been proud any other time if she hadn’t been so tired, if she hadn’t been so invested in this single conversation. An assemble as an assemble though, she knew better than to try to ignore one now unless specifically told otherwise. The world was still in too much of a shamble to pretend things were perfect, she mourned the breakfast she wouldn’t be able to finish and sprung from the table instead. 

“I hope you kill them.”

Not the right words, sentiment spot on but she missed her mark by a mile if the way Darcy laughed meant anything. Both hands to the dip of her jaw and Wanda pressed their mouths together, smeared the sugar crystals from her lips with a single kiss. Fleeting and quick, thumb swept along the bottom curve of Darcy’s lower lip to fix where her dark burgundy lipstick had threatened to shift and she was off. 

“I’ll see you soon,  _ moja lutka _ .”

Quick jog out of the cafeteria, her lungs still burned and this wasn’t fair, she hadn’t even been able to finish all of her breakfast like she had wanted. Not enough water, hadn’t even touched her orange juice and that never held once it hit room temperature, an entire glass gone to waste. She took off down the hall though, out the doors for the landing pad before her heart could really start to pound and there, that helter skelter blur was her brother. Made her push herself then, harsh sprint that made her lungs scream in her determination to at least try to touch the quinjet before him. 

Pietro had other ideas, caught her by her waist and swung her onto his shoulder before she could so much as shriek. Unfair treatment, put across his shoulders like some kind of yoke that couldn’t do much more than hang on, he practically dropped her into the seat across from him so quickly her head swam. Laughter made his chest rise and fall even if he didn’t make a sound, she could see it in his eyes so well that she knew the sound of it by memory alone. 

Entirely too smug as he lounged in his seat for a moment, like he needed to catch his breath, a passive aggressive luxury he gave just because he knew  _ she _ needed it. Wanda appreciated it for the gift it was, steel boned and she sank in her seat with a groan, one hand scrubbing over her face. She hadn’t even gotten to drink her orange juice, let alone enjoy Darcy’s compa-

Hand frozen on her cheek, a finger over her eye but she could still see enough to know that Pietro watched the color drain from her face. Concern in his brow, the set of his shoulders and how he leaned forward, prepared to rise from his seat but oh,  _ oh _ , she felt like she could be sick. Head on fire and her chest an ice box that trickled into her veins, Wanda breathed deep because she had to even as the edges of her vision shimmered with a carmine glitter. 

_ “Sestra?” _

She was scaring him, little brother that she’d promised herself wouldn’t ever be afraid again if there was anything she could do about it but it was all Wanda could do to keep from wanting to cry. Her eyes burned all the same, throat acid tight and sour as she inhaled and shivered. Deep breaths, she needed to keep control, she needed to, had to, couldn’t afford to lose herself with others so close. 

“Wan-”

“I kissed her.”

She must have sounded so angry to anybody that didn’t understand, Sokovian biting and thick but the others gave them a bit of a birth either out of respect or uncertainty. Barnes was the only one to really hesitate, glancing between the two of them once, twice before taking a seat the closest even a few empty spots away. Close in the event they needed him, that they needed somebody, and Wanda would have appreciated it more if she hadn’t been caught up in the way her brother sagged. The way his eyes went soft at the corners and downturned and the faintest of smiles pulled at his mouth. It looked like heartbreak, looked like an echo of the flicker fear that she felt and he knew even if he didn’t say. 

_ “Oh, sestra _ .”

-

After everything, losing Pietro when he was all she had ever really had and trying to learn how to stand again, she’d thought she knew pain. Glass dust in her lungs with every breath until the cutting bleed of it felt as familiar as he had, she’d taken comfort in the anguish because it meant she felt  _ something _ . Then the world had turned to ash with the flick of a madman’s fingers and she’d felt herself fall into a million pieces, she couldn’t scream when there was too much of her to make a sound. 

She’d known pain, wrapped it around herself without her brother and she’d madness with the choker it had made itself into on the Raft. Anxiety and destruction, desolation and rage, the journey had taken her to her knees and held her face to the floor but Wanda had learned the things that haunted her. Tried to consume her, devour her whole until there was nothing left but a shell to the power she had been given. Control had come second, hard won and fought for with bloodied teeth and nails, throat shredded from her feral screaming, but  _ she _ was the one who had come out on the other side of it all. 

She knew pain and she knew fear, knew the devastation that the Snap had caused the world and that some of those wounds were still wide open. Months had come and gone, nearly a year since everything had tried to desperately right itself with Steve’s sacrifice. Her friend had done the only thing he had known how, had been selfish for once even as he tried to give the rest of them a fighting chance. Those that remained and those that had returned had done their best to figure out the rest, tried to fix the things that had been left behind, she liked to be able to tell herself that they had done a good job. 

Wanda knew better, wounds often became infected even with the best of care, additional assistance required from time to time even if measures had already been taken. The world was no different than the human body, ran the risk of infections and fevers, missing limbs and illness. Death, something they had nearly faced far too soon from a threat they hadn’t known how to fight until it was almost too late. Wanda knew these things, understood them, but that didn’t make the system anymore easy to predict. 

Foolish, she had thought that they had caught enough of things that nothing would surprise her like this anymore. 

Childish and fearful, she stood beside Pietro like the little girl she hadn’t been in years and clutched at his hand because she could. Because she needed to, could taste his fear pantomime to the way she could feel her own, they shouldn’t have been here. They shouldn’t have had to be here, breathless and unable to scream in a place that shouldn’t have even existed. Well enough then that she didn’t need to scream, to cry, not when she could hear the shattering terror of those who had been housed here before them echoing in her teeth. A clenched jaw did nothing against the trauma of those who had died alone and in pain, she went white knuckled where she clung to her brother. 

Or maybe his grip was too tight, somebody's heartbeat pounding against her wrist where their forearms were seamed together. Impossible to tell where her panic ended and his started, Pietro held onto her like he hadn’t since they were little and that bomb had crashed through their home. They shouldn’t have been here, this shouldn’t have existed beyond the pipedream of a madman rotting in a shallow grave, but the world had other plans. 

“Breathe.”

Only Barnes had remained near them, watchful winter pale eyes on where they stood together like rain soaked children. The rest of the team had wandered off in pairs, leaving them the odd group out as Barnes stayed behind when he must have ached to follow. Like he couldn’t bear to leave them behind, a man his size shouldn’t have been able to sound so soft. So sure and gentle like she hadn’t expected him to ever be, Wanda would have thanked him if she had the words. 

Why would she need words if she could shiver and feel herself trying to fall apart with every breath?

“Why is this here?”

Pietro, verbal where she couldn’t manage to be, guttural spoken words like they’d sifted through the razors that had replaced his tongue. This place felt awash in anguish for as much as it was empty, nothing breathing beyond the people that had come with them. This pain was old, this building cold where nobody had walked its halls in hours, she could feel the echo pull of where the corpses had been taken and men had come and gone. 

Where  _ he _ had been, breathing when he shouldn’t have had the systems to be able to do so. 

Ice laden rage and the miasma curl of a death rattle that wasn’t hers sifting through her veins, Wanda swayed where she stood, their fingers locked and her knuckles threatening to bruise, she wanted back on the jet, she wanted off of this solid land if it meant she didn’t have to feel this. Didn’t have to breathe like this, she swallowed thick against the fist clench in her throat and nearly staggered beneath the weight of it. 

“We didn’t know it was him until we touched down, and Sam still isn’t sure.”

Sam wasn’t sure, they hadn’t known, but Wanda could smell his cologne and feel the whisper of his hands holding her face again. Fingertips pressing just beneath her ears, thumbs hooked beneath the cut of her jaw, her chest clenched as her stomach heaved. She was going to be sick if they stayed here and she was going to scream when they left, she could feel the breakdown festering where her scars had been clawed open once again. 

Pinprick along the tender inside of her elbow, acid electric in her veins and Wanda heaved at the blister burn of it in the back of her throat. Choked back a sob and lost a warbling gurgle of sound instead, nails cutting at the soft between Pietro’s fingers as she clung. 

“He killed them.” 

Whisper quiet and wet, ready to tremble apart at the seams and she stumbled where Pietro yanked her hard against his side. Little brother shaking like he could come apart if their ribs weren’t crushed together and she wanted to sooth him, shush and sweep her thumbs in the sleepless bruises beneath his eyes until he leaned into her touch and sighed. Her hands didn’t seem to work right, she couldn’t let go of her grip on his knuckles long enough to do anything even if she wanted to. 

Barnes watched them, winter pale eyes and concern so palpable she could feel it along her spine, it almost got rid of the rancid stench of terror. Like he cared, like he knew them enough to have so much empathy for two winterland orphans that hadn’t been enough in a long, long time. 

“Wilson,” Two fingers pressed to the com in his ear and his voice crackled through hers, snapped a shiver across her brothers bones that she could feel in her own. “You’re going to have to carry on without us.”

“Wanda,”

He sounded all of five years old again and curled up in her bed, scared of the monster under his. She’d been brave then, hadn’t told him about the thing that lived under hers and had held him instead, and she should be brave now. She knew that he needed her just as much as she knew she wanted to scream, so she stared at Barnes where she couldn’t look at her brother. If she looked then she would cry, if she let herself see the fear on his face then she would have to face her own, she couldn’t be strong for both of them when she could barely keep her own head above water. 

Barnes was safe, tundra water eyes and a carefully flat expression, he gave away nothing so long as she didn’t dig. She clung to Pietro instead, stared at Barnes like he was the only salvation she had as she stood on a floor that shouldn’t have been there in a building that shouldn’t have existed. Something against the thunder of her heart as she breathed in the harsh bite of Strucker’s prefered cologne and told herself she couldn’t feel his fingers knotting in her hair. 

“You’re safe.” He knew things he shouldn’t, he knew secrets that weren’t his to hold but Barnes just watched them. Let Wanda stare and gazed at the thing that she’d become, all teeth and nails and terrified desperation. “I’m right here, Pietro, you’re safe.”

-

The base had been quiet when they returned, like the world couldn’t be bothered to offer any kind of racket for their trouble. Maybe their trauma was enough for once, the hollow look in her brothers eyes and the way he jittered and shook like he needed to run. Like he was ready to bolt, and she remembered being fifteen and the too many times he’d begged and pleaded and cried to get her to leave whatever orphanage had scooped them up that time. No home had been able to keep them when they had only really belonged to one another and the grave that their innocence had been left behind in. 

Barely touched down, the bruising grip of his hands at her shoulders and his mouth to the top of her head, Pietro had taken off before the ramp had fully descended. She understood, she got it, knew what it was like to need something so desperately the only answer was to run toward it, but the childish part of her wished he had stayed. Shriveled and sobbed inside at the thought of being alone right now, of him being out there on his own at a time like this, and something must have showed on her face. 

Soft sigh, something almost loving in the way that Barnes gave a fleeting touch to her arm before following after the blur of her brother. It wasn’t her, left her alone as the team dispersed and Sam tried to ask if she needed anything. She needed something, needed everything, but Wanda just waved him away with a smile she didn’t feel and watched where Barnes had walked off after her run away brother. And he was taken care of, just like that, followed with a devotion that she knew in theory if not in practice. 

Pietro would be fine even as he ran like a skittish dog in the night, someone with a gentle hand ready and willing to guide him home. 

But that left her, alone in the night even with the soft lights from the compound alight on landing pad to keep the dark at bay. The world was quiet as if every soul slept, delicate drone of insects from the trees and the murmurs of the forest promising to wrap her up and keep her close where her security had fled. She wanted laughter, slick paint smeared across her skin and the sticky string of salt water taffy caught between her teeth. Comfort and familiarity, she wanted soft fingers in her hair and the ocean eyes to tell her that everything was alright. 

She might have ruined something, she might have ruined them, but she knew what Darcy’s mouth felt like now and Wanda needed her friend more than anything else. She could deal with the consequences of her actions when they happened, the doors for the compound opened silently. Friday, quiet for a change but ever present as she opened doors and kept the lights at their late night dim. The walk was longer than she remembered, quiet echo of her boots on the floor and the shiver shift of her jacket around her hips where it trailed. Like these halls stretched, like the world had grown when she wasn’t looking until the passages of time that she knew didn’t mean anything anymore. 

Or maybe it was just her, the rattle jagged panic pulsing around her heart and the way she felt ready to burst apart. All caught up in her own head until she couldn’t tell what was what anymore past that fear, that burning terror that she’d gotten so used to not having to feel anymore. 

Press of her hand to the panel next to Darcy’s door and it slid open, she’d been given permission weeks ago when sleep in her own bed evaded her in favor of a spiced cup of tea in her friends kitchen. The quiet of the compound hall sealed away with the  _ click _ of the door against her back, and the silence was swept away then beneath the muffled rush of water and a sea foam spell sunken quick and easy into the soft flesh of her sides, her abdomen. Singing where there shouldn’t have been, where Darcy had giggled and tittered and sworn that she couldn’t sing to save her life, everything was perfect. 

Champagne bubbling bright and rose tinted in her veins, her vision swam first to the left and then the right. Honey lacquered hypnotic that drizzled and dripped down her spine until it pooled at the base, made her oxytocin loose and eager as she swayed forward for more. Heavy feet, heavy limbed, weighted by something she didn’t understand but Wanda stumbled forward all the same. Drawn and desperate and hungry for that sugared lullaby, it would fill her lungs if she let it, swallow her whole if she breathed deep and allowed it in. 

Blissful intoxication and everything tasted like overdrawn taffy, saltwater bitter and candy sugar sweet, her mouth watered. Her fingers ached from being empty, her body thrummed with a want for more, to fall to her knees, the sanctified promise of having made an offering of herself the only thing she could think to achieve, the door for the bathroom opened easily. Silent twist of the knob, slide of the door and it was louder here, visceral and pure and beckoning. Lush and low, full and clear and arching against the ceiling as it seeped through her muscles, as it spread more of that dopamine crush along her marrow. 

She could stay like this forever, sunken deep beneath the tidal, pearl crusted fever that called to her. Feet on the bathroom floor, boots against the tile and her fingers tangled in the curtain that hung for the shower. Celestial figures that meant nothing, the curtain felt like liquid silk beneath her fingers where it jerked aside easily. Spilled steaming water onto the floor in a rose and seabrine scented deluge, and Darcy-

Patches of fire on her skin, scales of gold and burnish and ruby across her flesh. The full of her breasts and the swell of her hips, a glimmer dust of golden across every part of her that Wanda had ever wanted to put her hands to, her mouth. As if she had been painted in a sunset and soaked in the sea, a vision more than she had ever been when perfection had no right to be expanded upon. This was something more, this was something different, from the glister of scales across her wet skin to the open full of her mouth, too sharp teeth that peeked from behind the bloodied bow. 

“Wanda!”

Shrill and horrified, sea sunken opal eyes stared at her as Darcy’s hands flailed. As a shampoo bottle crashed to the floor, as the steam from her shower dampened Wanda’s skin, the woman pressed herself back into the wall like she had any reason to shy away, as if Wanda would ever hurt her. 

“You’re no-”

“ _ Go sit in the living room!” _

Liquid steel and a satin sheathed command, her spine straightened beneath the instruction even as her body demanded to obey. To do the only task she’d been given for surely nothing would ever be more important, Darcy watched her with those backlit eyes the entire time as she stumbled over herself out of the bathroom. Like the barrier had been necessary, the click of the door and that was fresh air in her lungs, scented like flowers and the promise of rain where she’d left her window open again. Familiar apartment, familiar furniture, she’d been here hundreds of times but it had never felt like this. 

Go sit in the living room, and she wanted to hesitate, but there was something still ocean mist cool in her lungs that had her sitting on the couch despite herself. Legs given out from under her, hands trembling as she tried to get a grasp on herself, she could hear Darcy. Just behind a door, just in another room, just out of reach but she had told Wanda to sit, she had made her wait. 

The almost silent rush of water stopped, the quiet  _ swish _ of the shower curtain pulling aside, she felt nearly like herself when the door opened. Bare feet on the floor, the delicate sway of hesitation before Darcy stepped around the sofa. Spiral fall of sodden curls down her back, plush violet bathrobe wrapped tight around her like some kind of shield. Ocean eyes and a paintless mouth, none of the scales that Wanda had seen just moments before. 

Nothing to signify that Darcy wasn’t just  _ Darcy _ , but she knew better now. 

“What are you?”

“Vaguely traumatized that my shower got interrupted, a little hun-”

“ _ Darcy _ .”

Narrowed eyes, there was a soft curl of rage there, indignant and bitter and Mariana Trench churning, it was impossible to if that anger was even really hers. Maybe it was, acidic sour of betrayal starting to override her own panic, rage that she hadn’t been able to deal with from Strucker’s bunker festering rapidly. But Darcy had always been horribly, beautifully vindictive, lethal with her words and her intentions and the way she kept step with a soldier out of time like he was an old friend she had missed dearly. Defying expectation had been second nature for the woman who seemingly feared nothing, Wanda wasn’t sure what she expected anymore. 

“Exactly. I’m Darcy, the same woman who stays up with you when you can’t sleep. You know me, Wanda.” Defiant and furious, she watched as Darcy’s jaw clenched and her face tilted forward, shoulders squared where a challenge had been issued. Fine pointed ears cut up from beneath her heavy fall of curls, firelight freckling of scales across her cheeks and nose like they had been there the entire time. Like they belonged there among the shark-like row of her teeth and the vast opal of her eyes, no pupils even if her lids were still just as low, water clinging to her lashes. “Or am I not good enough for you to kiss now because I’m not human?”

When had she stood up?

The crackle of too much emotion and not enough words, she wasn’t ready for this, she didn’t want something like this. She’d wanted comfort, not a reality that she couldn’t run away from with a fear that she still didn’t know how to face, it was usually easy to forget how much taller she was than Darcy. Her head tipped back where she had to look up but Darcy had the upper hand just as much as she always did. That wasn’t fair, that wasn’t how this was supposed to go, she  _ knew _ Darcy. 

She loved Darcy, but her anger found her tongue first. 

“You lied to me! I came to you with everything, and you never once tri-”

“Because I knew you would do thi-”

_ “You lied to me!” _

Carmine electric and the pretty mug left on the coffee table shattered with a loud pop. Dozens of ceramic pieces scattered like a gunshot though the room and Darcy flinched, screeched at the sound like she’d been hurt. Like it had hit her, like Wanda had hit her, she felt like she was going to be sick at the thought and the way that Darcy stepped back from her. Put distance between them like she never had, like she thought for an instant that Wanda might strike out at her. This was wrong, all of this was wrong. 

“Get out.”

“ _ Moja lu _ -”

“Get out!”

A command cloaked in fury underlined with fear, she had no chance not to listen. Not to obey, she left Darcy in the middle of her living room as the door slammed shut behind her, boots thundering on the floor as she ran like she always did. That was what they were best at, the Maximoff children knew no better answer than to run from their problems just like her brother had the moment the jet had touched down. Just like she did now, nothing else left to do other than run until her heart felt ready to burst in the brittle cage of her ribs. 

She broke apart just inside the conservatory, the only other safe place she could think to flee too. Glass walls and cool wooden floors, she knew laughter and licking her lunch off of her hands in this room, but the room felt ready to cave in. It smelled like Darcy’s perfume in here, salt water taffy and the pop fizz of a carnival that never slept, like things she wasn’t allowed to have now. She had hurt her,  _ scared _ her, snapped at Darcy with the same horrified malice that had been directed at them more times than she could count. 

She’d made Darcy into the sort of monster that she herself had been made to be, made her afraid like Darcy never deserved to be. Wanda stuffed a fist against her teeth and collapsed back against the conservatory door with a punched sob, the starlit glass catching her cries and holding them for her while her control fled.


	3. Chapter 3

One hour sobbing in the conservatory became a day running along the trails to try to keep her mind busy. It spiraled from there, a day became two, a handful, turned into a week, built on itself until the separation became something she couldn’t even hope to control. A beast all its own, she knew that she had been the cause but that didn’t make it any easier, an entire month spanned between them without a single word from her friend. 

Foolish, childish, Wanda knew she should have apologized immediately, as soon as Darcy had let her, whether Darcy let her or not. Instead, she’d made everything worse because she’d been afraid of being  _ denied _ . 

She’d broken something in them, all temper and misplaced fear and poor control. A single interaction and it was like she’d plucked out whatever good had built itself between them. Years of laughter and precious moments brought under fire all because of her, calloused words and what could only be described as hatred, as fear.

God help her, she’d treated Darcy like some kind of monster, no better than the very thing she’d become adept at putting down. Nevermind what Darcy may be, what she had hidden from Wanda for her own reasons, she deserved better than that. Laughter and watercolors and those ridiculous chocolates that she paid too much money for, Darcy was worth more than the way Wanda could never seem to manage her words. 

Darcy deserved an apology, but that seemed to be the only thing that Wanda couldn’t figure out how to give her. 

Instead, Wanda hesitated outside of her office, unsure and anxious every single time and that was a strange thing, having to go to Darcy’s office rather than the soft lit glass room that had become theirs. It had taken two days to realize that Darcy hadn’t returned since that night, not a single trace of her to be found in the conservatory. No smears of paint, no shoes left behind, none of her fingerprints against the glass where she’d traced something out when she couldn’t be bothered to pick up a brush. 

The room didn’t even smell like her perfume anymore, and that was her fault, she’d taken away Darcy’s favorite place on the entire complex because what - she was scared of Wanda?

“Why does your face look like that?”

Breakfast interrupted and Wanda sighed, fingers clenched around the spoon she’d been using to mangle her halved fruit. She certainly hadn’t been eating it, she didn’t even  _ like _ grapefruit and Wanda wanted to hurl the damn spoon just so she didn’t have to deal with it anymore. Instead, she watched her brother where he stood, no, glared at him with his sweat curled hair and the flush that rode high on his cheeks. 

“Like  _ what _ ?”

That wasn’t the after effect of a workout and they were both well aware of it, he’d worn that exact sort of ecstacy sheen when she’d walked in on him and a partner. This time there was no squealing young man shoved full body out their living room window, just her brother with a tray full of  _ something _ . Those were teeth marks on his throat, violet bruises that crept from his shoulders and chest, fingerprints if ever she’d seen them. 

Pietro hadn’t been alone at least, wrapped up in Barnes like the older soldier was the only thing he needed. 

“Like someone wedged a bathbomb into your ass witho-”

_ “Brate!” _

She was going to throw him across the cafeteria, somebody save them all. Like in the time he’d been dead she’d managed to forget just how much they drove one another up a wall, or maybe they hadn’t quite yet. Like they’d been so desperate to not get separated or left behind that they hadn’t found the time to annoy each other. They couldn’t seem to stop now, she tripped when she ran and he ran his mouth too much and for all that their edges fit together seamlessly, it felt like he rubbed her raw at the absolute worst times. 

“I’m just saying! I haven’t seen you look this bitchy in years!” Her scowl did nothing to detour him, he sat like he had the right and well, she supposed he did now. It wasn’t like anybody else ate breakfast with her anymore, it wasn’t like any of the facility staff took the time to do much more than watch her with drawn, weary expressions like they weren’t sure if she would choose to strike out. Her only petty little victory came from the fleeting grimace Pietro gave as he sat, like part of him were more tender than he was used to anymore. “I was expecting this to wea-what is  _ that _ ?”

“What, my spoon?”

“It’s a tiny dagger shovel!”

“It has  _ teeth _ , so I can gouge into things. Like  _ you _ .”

He reeled back a little as she waved it between them, offended or affronted or some kind of upset that the American’s at large swore they weren’t capable of. Sokovian guttural and thick against the back of her teeth, Wanda waved it at him for a moment before stabbing at her grapefruit again. Digging free a chunk and taking a bite only to have her mouth betray her, her face twist into a displeased expression at the overly sour taste. How did Darcy eat these things every day?

Nearly silent sputter of laughter and Pietro reached out, safety of his own hand evidently not an important factor as he hooked a finger around the end of the grapefruits little cup stand and pulled. Took her food away from her like he always did, nudged his own toward the center of the table like some sort of peace offering of sausage and bacon and those crispy breakfast potatoes he  _ knew _ she loved. Damn him and the way he knew her better than anybody ever had, she relinquished her hold on the serrated spoon only to take up a sausage link with her fingers. Slick grease almost immediately down her palm that she caught with her tongue, Wanda stuffed the meat into her cheeks with two clean bites. 

“Still?”

Flinch mid swallow and Wanda coughed quietly, his weight supported on one elbow and he leaned forward. Sympathetic pull to his brow, empathy that she loved and hated in the blue of his gaze, that wasn’t fair. All the same, she took the hand that he dropped to the middle of the table, laced their fingers together so their knuckles bumped and threatened to bruise. Held onto him with a tight ferocity where she couldn’t hold Darcy, poor substitute for the things she wanted that she’d robbed herself of. 

“I haven’t- it’s not her fault-”

“Never said it was.”

“If this is your idea of comfort the-”

“Honesty, we are working on honesty, remember?” He returned the way she bared her teeth at him, and Pietro’s words stuttered and caught when he took a chunk from the grapefruit. Face twisted up and a look of utter betrayal coloring his expression, Wanda nearly laughed at the abject horror there. “Why do people eat this? It  _ bites _ .”

“I think it's an acquired taste.” 

Low hum and Pietro took another bite almost out of spite, like he wanted to figure out just how long it took him to acquire a taste for the bitter pink fruit. Greedy and she took another sausage, tore it between her teeth and chewed as she stared, twisted their fingers until his own went white at the knuckle. 

They were going to pop if she twisted much harder, but Pietro just sighed. 

“So you haven’t even tri-”

“Agents Maximoff.” Soft tone, a voice from the ceiling and they both jolted as a few other cafeteria occupants jumped in their seats. Friday didn’t care enough about social niceties and instead, she carried on like nobody had given any objection. Technically none had, nothing verbal even as the two of them scraped their chairs back to stand. A little too fast, Pietro’s skittered like it could have toppled if he hadn’t caught the back with a quick hand, they moved toward the exit before she could even finish addressing them. “Sergeant Barnes requires your presence in the briefing room immediately.”

Sergeant Barnes, like Pietro hadn’t left him less than an hour ago. She knew damn well that those finger presses would match to the pads of his if she looked hard enough, traces of one another on their skin where they seemed wholly incapable of keeping their hands to themselves anymore. She burned with it, jealousy tasted like battery acid on her tongue, electric flares of touching a lightbulb or standing out in a storm. God help her, that wasn't fair to either of them, any of them, the two men hadn't earned that ire for all that Wanda wished she could convince herself she was worth more.

"I'll talk to her."

"Yeah?"

Quick steps through the hall, the quickest jog she could manage without him leaving her behind. Their hands clasped together, little tugs at her shoulder where he was just faster than she and Pietro pulled her along. As if a hall could ever hope to separate them like death had already tried to, she followed with sharp footfalls and lungs that threatened to tighten. 

“Today. I’ll do it today, don’t let me-”

“I won’t.”

Sharp toothed grin and a quick fleeting exuberance in the face of something potentially cataclysmic, it felt almost like being children in their apartment building all over again. Clamoring through the halls as fast as they could, late to a meal that wouldn’t fill them even as they convinced themselves they wouldn’t be late. If only things were that simple anymore, but what an injustice that was, trying to convince herself that their lives had ever been comfortable or simple. They’d seen too much, done too much before she’d even had to smell the way their parents began to rot in the ruin of their living room. 

Almost laughter as he pulled her into the room, business first and their inappropriate giggles second if only they were lucky, but oh. There would be no luck, not by the set of Bucky’s shoulders and the clench of his jaw, there was a fire there that she wasn’t sure she had ever really seen before. 

This tasted like losing Steve all over again, the hollow aftermath and the way he’d been a feral husk of a man barely contained by delicate hands and ruby lips.

“What happened?”

She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to ask, but  _ something _ had put that look on his face and she hated it. Surely one of the strongest men she had ever known and he looked ready to set the world on fire, the air around him crackling with a rage that she could feel blister flickering against her skin even across the room. This wasn’t the Bucky she’d come to know, not entirely, methodical monster that lurked under his skin where they had tried to cleave out his soul turning everything icy and hungry. 

“Friday.”

Power surged against her nerves and a three dimensional model rose from the table, all smooth blue lines of a streetscape that she didn’t know. Buildings she didn’t recognize and street signs that she’d never seen before, but there were cars and people and things that made sense even if they shouldn’t have. There was a car she recognized as one of the SI vehicles sliding through traffic toward the curb and her blood started to chill before the panic even set in. For surely that was the only way to describe the instant that followed, the EMP that rocketed out such a shock that the ground trembled and quacked with it. Cars spun out of control and pedestrians did their best to run for some kind of shelter, the SI car careened into a concrete median. The hood crinkled, the front of it crumpled in as it immediately started to smoke and seethe. 

Her nails were going to cut crescents into the soft between his knuckles, but Pietro didn’t even flinch. 

“Twenty minutes ago, one of our cars was involved in an attack in Miami en route to a conference. The driver was killed on impact, three unidentified operatives apprehended Ms Lewis.”

Mechanically aided, enhanced and covered so completely that she couldn’t see their fingers, their throats. The back passenger door of the SUV was wrenched open as they watched, they didn’t apprehend her, they  _ dragged _ her from the back of the car by her hair and her arms. Furious, fearful expression on her face, mouth twisted in a scream as her feet kicked out, as she struggled and fought them and cried out all to no avail. Darcy looked terrified, and Wanda felt like she was going to lose the sausages that she’d eaten out of spite. 

Across the table, Bucky had gone white knuckled, stiff as he watched the footage before them but there was something there. He felt wrong, tightly coiled and anxious, he had watched this already more than just the first time, he had gutted himself with this video feed just like Wanda felt like she could do. Some sort of punishment, a call to arms and a rage soaked cry for penance all at once, he felt like the abyssal inbetween that she herself had become without Pietro to tether her and-

_ Oh. _

“Her subdermal transmitter is currently offline. Whatever charge they used wiped it, but Friday is insistent that the effect is only temporary.”

“How temporary?”

Chaos screamed within her veins, wrecked her to the core and wracked its way across her nerves until she could feel the burn of her magic in the back of her throat. In her belly, it wanted to consume her and she wanted to let it, desperate and hungry for a slick blood coated vengeance that she would never accomplish with the careful tightrope control she kept over herself. Wanda didn’t want careful then, she didn’t want safe, she wanted Darcy laughing at her and flecked with paint and singing the ocean deep song that promised to pull her under into its grasp. 

Pietro vibrated beside her, or maybe it was she who shook, fine boned tremble that clacked her ribs and tried to bust apart her clavicle and her spine. Certainly that must have been her, the room threatened to tumble apart if she breathed too deep, if she breathed at all. 

“We don’t know.”

Greedy and demanding, she took Sokovian winter lungfuls with the hope that the world spiraled out of control like it threatened to; Bucky stared at them over the hologram of Darcy being choked into unconsciousness before her limp body was thrown roughly into the back of an armored vehicle. No plates, ink tint across the windows, she couldn’t see a single defining feature on the men or the car and it peeled away from the wreckage with the same purpose that it had caused it all. This had been deliberate, this had been planned and intentional and she wanted to know what it was like to rend their bones from their sockets. 

Pietro was all that kept her contained, tight grip and steady breaths where she wanted to scream. Wanda wanted to lean into him as much as she wanted to jerk away, but everything had taken a carmine static tinge to it that crackled and fizzed. 

“That isn’t good enou-”

“It’s all we’ve fucking got.” Sharp bark, voice curt and cutting and she nearly rocked back on her heels from the force of it. All his rage and all his pain pent up and pointed at her in that instant and Wanda bristled. Shoulders squared, electric damnation licking at the backs of her teeth, she wanted to sink her teeth into him and watch him bleed, pull at the precious walls he had constructed around his psyche until she knew his every thought and fear. “I don’t like this any more than you do, but we can’t do shit until Friday can try to give us a location.”

Her brother caught her scream, read it in her shoulders and her fingers and took it from her before she could find her footing. 

“You love her.”

Like an accusation, razor tongue and rocksalt malice, she flung the words at him like they should have hurt. Like he should have known better, how dare he, what sort of man did he think he was where he got to love Darcy and hold her brother at the same time?

“Like you don’t?”

One of them flinched, either her or her brother but Pietro stood his ground for all that he grumbled. 

“Now is not the ti-”

“What, is he not enough? You have his cock but you need he-”

The table rattled with the impact of his palms, metal squealing as it bent beneath the vibranium. The hologram skittered and fell apart with contact, the look in his artic eyes murderous and molten and it was as if she remembered herself then. For this was her friend if only just, this was the man who had helped her find her feet again even when he couldn’t be certain of his, but he looked ready to pull her across the table by a fistful of her hair if he could reach. Like they had done to Darcy, but that kind of force from the Winter Soldier would snap her neck regardless of how much reform had cleansed his muscles. 

“She’s my  _ niece _ . I promised my sister I would keep her safe, and this-” Flesh hand flung to where the hologram had been, empty space between them and Wanda’s heart bleeding, screaming as she listened. “Isn’t fucking  _ safe. _ ”

Tension thick but she deflated first, slow inward curl of her shoulders that made her body seem so small. She could feel the moment the fight left him, the way his anger cycled inward where it would coil and fester. Bucky sighed, fingers pulling through his hair and his eyes screwing shut tight like he thought he could chase away the nightmare this had become. 

“None of this is what I wanted for her, but she doesn’t fucking listen. God, she’s worse than Steve.”

Rattling sighs and something like a sick and sad hope in her chest that strummed and fluttered, desperate to take flight. There were questions burning there, there were things she wanted to ask but didn’t have the words, didn’t have the time. This wasn’t the right moment, not when a mountain of a man who had already lived through too much looked dangerously close to teetering apart before her very eyes, her and her brother didn’t have enough hands between them to try to put him back together if they needed to. She wasn’t prepared for this, she hadn’t asked for any of this. 

“We’ll find her?”

She sounded small even to her own ears, and Wanda swallowed thick against the way Bucky blinked at her. Exhausted and heavy, but he met her eyes where few ever did anymore. 

“We’ll bring her home.”

-

Her days dragged, time spent caring for the plants that filled Darcy’s apartment just for something to do. They didn’t respond to her touch quite the same, didn’t flourish like they did for the other woman but she tried. Talked to them because Friday told her that they fed on carbon dioxide and it was something, someone to talk to when there was no snorting laughter or clattering of a spoon in a tea mug to accompany the silence. Fill it, chase it away, make the empty that had overtaken this apartment seem a little less.

It wasn’t the same though, there was only so much she could disguise the way she’d taken to talking to herself. She’d taken to touching the plants as she paced the apartment, cleaned it where she’d already scoured and cleaned her own. Fingertips drawing along drooping leaves and colorful petals, her magic swelled and burned and yearned for that which she couldn’t allow. She needed control here, needed this place as safe and as carefully kept as she could make it for when Darcy returned. 

“Agent Maximoff, you are needed immediately at the landing pad.”

Delicate meant nothing when she startled, crushed a clutch of string-of-pearls in her palm as she whirled about. Almost took the plant with her as she ran, a skidding sprint out into the hall as the apartment door slammed shut behind her. 

She felt as if she could be sick by the time she hit the exterior doors, lungs wailing and her head spinning, but that was her brother there just at the ramp for the jet. Like he had waited for her, and she could only just see Bucky further in within the shadows, could make out the grim face of Sam as Pietro yanked her inside, Scott having already strapped himself in. 

“Is thi-”

“Buckle up.”

Brisk where she was pushed into a chair, where he told her what to do, she almost wanted to argue. Could feel the fight right there on the edge of her tongue but there was such a caged look in his eyes, fathomless creature untamed behind that icy blue. They looked the same sunlit opal for a heartbeat, for two, and Wanda bit her tongue. Swallowed the things she wanted to say lest he unravel on this jet. 

“Her tracker went live a few minutes ago outside of Sibiu, Romania in the Vârful Moldoveanu area. We’re going to assume that whoever took her has realized that she’s giving off a signal, and we’re going in like it's a trap.”

Steady spoken, forceful and calm, Sam didn’t have the same kind of command that Steve had. He took a room with his sympathy, his no nonsense bore from grief and the digestion of it that followed, never once had she thought to question him. Never once had she rallied against him, and Wanda watched him with wide eyes where he stood at the front of the jet. He could lead an army like that, resolute and steadfast, and he only had them instead to show for all of his trouble. 

“I don’t want anybody trying to be a hero. Regardless of what we touch down to, we’re going to bring her home. We’ve got an hour until we make contact, I suggest you prepare yourselves.”

Prepare herself, when Pietro sat beside her with his hand clasped in hers like a tether to keep her from floating away. Too far in her own head, too consumed already by the things she couldn’t control and anxiety that wasn’t even hers. Bucky sat across from them, fingers gliding over a rifle as he checked the barrel and the clip, he gleamed like a walking arsenol with more throwing knives than she had ever seen on one single person. She would have shivered at the sight if it hadn’t made her want to sigh with a selfish, savage content. 

An hour felt like a year, she had already waited five days with plants that weren’t hers and a quivering fear that she wouldn’t be able to make this right again. That Darcy would come home to her in a bag, that her body would be lost to the dirt and the earth and so far beyond reach that Wanda would never know her laughter or her smile again. An hour where she wanted to riot and tear the jet apart to make it move faster and all she could do instead was clutch at Pietro’s hand and try not to shake. Watch Bucky as he slowly, steady stopped being the man she had come to know and shut down into a form more primal, militant and trained. 

Everything was quiet when they landed, and the soft tone from Friday broke the hush of the moment.

“I have Ms Lewis’ location ahead.”

A monstrous structure of concrete and steel built into the mountain side, she could feel the thrum of it just beneath the rock face and the icy chill. Buried beneath tons of rock and scenic Slavic hills, she knew this air even if the forest wasn’t right, wasn’t the same sky even if she knew this sun. A heartbeat there, a panic fluttering with exhaustion and delirium so thick it painted a film on her teeth, that was her Darcy if ever she had known the woman. 

The door came free from its hinges with a loud metallic squeal and a pulse of carmine electric crackling. She heard the way Scott exclaimed as it went flying but she didn’t have the patience to worry about scaring him. Quiet, quick footfalls and it felt like gliding, felt like flying as she overtook the empty hall. 

Not a raised voice, not a pointed gun, there were no obsticals despite the doors that flew open as she passed them. They were alone here, empty of any who would defy them but there were ghosts in these walls that brought forth the taste of bile, phantoms that pulled at her senses and screamed. Choked up cloy and burning, it smelled like him, every inch of this place saturated with his cologne and his breath until she could feel his fingers knotting in her hair all over again. Pressing and pulling and bending her just like he’d wanted for however stale the scent was, gone hollow and cold just hours too late. 

_ Strucker.  _

_ Strucker.  _

_ Strucker.  _

_ Strucker. _

Symphony between her ears and she knew the others caught the word, heard a flinch and a swear as one of them kept pace with her. There was no chance to fumble, no time to falter or hesitate, the building felt like a maze as it stretched and sprawled through the mountain. The walls shivered and the ceiling groaned, she could bring the entire structure crashing down on them if she wasn’t careful, if she didn’t breathe just right. Wanda twisted around a corner and powered down a hall at a run, body numb to the way her lungs must have burned, the way her chest must have ached. 

It felt like a hollow victory, she’d missed something, wandered past some kind of fight that she couldn’t hear. The heavy door that separated them came open with a echoing ring, cast light into the room where there hadn’t previously been. Dark as pitch and the air held the heavy stench of blood gone cold, urine left to pool and swim with the bite of stomach acid, the silence spoke of more suffering than the only occupant. 

Crumpled on the floor like she’d been left there, Wanda didn’t need a light to see the sunfire freckle of scales across pale skin that had started to grow back. Rivets of blood that ran in thin streams, scales plucked and flesh shredded where pieces of her had been taken. No movement save for the shallow rise and fall of her chest, she smelled of anguish gone sour and bone deep, fear gone feral and fetid. Wanda would have thought her sleeping if not for the eyes that stared at her through the dark. 

Sunken opals lit internal from a sea swallowed sun, salt water taffy and ocean froth, the other woman stared at her. Stared through her, half of her face obscured by a muzzle of leather and steel that swallowed her jaw. She blinked out of tandem, no recognition and no sign of the boisterous woman that Wanda would have torn down the heavens to find. 

_ “Darcy. _ ”

A quiet, rasping hum from the abused column of her throat, unbroken by Wanda’s heartache as if she hadn’t spoken at all, she could taste the ocean tidal on her tongue as Bucky shouldered his way into the room.


	4. Chapter 4

He hadn’t left her side since the surgeon had finally caved and let there be a visitor in her room. Hadn’t left her bed since she’d been moved into the room, curtains drawn and the lights reduced to a delicate glow. It had been impossible to find a moment when Bucky  _ hadn’t _ hovered within the room, kept her at arm's reach should Darcy stir or whimper in her sleep, need somebody. Not once had the woman been alone, the soldier’s entire being focused on the way she breathed, the blip and fall of her heart monitor. 

It would have been endearing had Wanda not desperately wanted to be where he was. 

Every time she had come to the medical ward, he had been there, a sentinel in waiting should Darcy so much as blink, and Wanda was ready to pull at her hair. No, the woman hadn’t woken yet, not that she could tell, but how was she supposed to begin to even compose her apology when she couldn’t get in the same room?

It wasn’t as if he had tried to keep Wanda from her. No, in fact, she doubted entirely that Bucky had even really noticed she was there. So wrapped up in taking care of his family that nothing else mattered, and she knew that feeling, she did, but that didn’t make it any less irritating to work with. She couldn’t fault him, she refused to, remembered how she had been when she’d come to breathing and solid and found her brother leaning over her. 

Instead, their third day back from that damn mountain and she’d eaten breakfast because she had to. Because Darcy pouted and protested when she didn’t and she followed that expectation even if Darcy wasn’t awake, even if Darcy would chide her for something she had or hadn’t done. She still hated grapefruit, doubted she would ever acquire a taste for a food that bite her when she tried to eat it, but any thoughts of it were lost just outside the now familiar door in the medical ward. 

Low murmuring, voices where there hadn’t been previously, dulcet and rumbling, full bodied and lush, she  _ knew _ those voices. 

She knew them, and she hadn’t expected to have them here, frozen in the doorway for a hospital room that felt like an ocean she was never meant to cross. Their dark heads bent together but she could see the shift in a bicep, the curl of an arm with how Darcy clung to him, or maybe Bucky clung to her. Tight clasped hands and heated hospital blankets, they were a family if ever Wanda had known what that looked like from the outside peering in, she wasn’t ready for any of this. 

Sea sunken opal eyes stared at her, two pairs from beneath heavy lids with dark smudge lashes and she swallowed thick. Found and pinned and God help her, they were beautiful if they were terrifying. Her hands clutched at the soft amber yarn of her cardigan, a touch too long in the sleeves and trailing where Darcy had taken her measurements by sight alone. She had wanted comfort, something to wrap herself in where her own arms couldn’t reach, but she felt something of a child now as the two of them watched her. No doubt took stock and found her lacking, wanting, she wanted to cry just at the sight of them. 

She watched that arctic pale overtake Bucky’s eyes instead, watched him climb to his feet with an easy, gliding motion. Kiss pressed to the back of the hand he held, murmured words that she didn’t hear for all that she knew the tone. His footfalls shouldn’t have been so quiet, he wasn’t something she could begin to compete with or compartmentalize when her worldview had been turned on its side for the thousandth time in her life. 

It amazed her, the way she could stay so still as he took to her space, his fingers sliding gently into her hair to press his mouth to her hairline. A chaste kiss that spoke of comfort and affection, things she surely didn’t deserve given the mess she had made. Just the same, Wanda swore she felt him smile against her forehead, knew that he held her closer than he needed to for longer than necessary and she sighed into it. Leaned into him and the calm he exuded until Bucky extracted himself. 

Inclined his head back to the bed with a quick wink and excused himself from the room. 

And then there was only them, alone and stranded castaway far flung, she had nothing to hold onto but her own desperation and ill placed pride. All of the air had been taken from the room, it felt impossible to breathe with how Darcy stared at her, pearlescent eyes and carefully bandaged cheeks and nose. He had pulled out her scales, the dusting of them that looked like little stardust freckles when she made herself seem human, and Wanda shivered. 

Had taken her sunfire scales just as he had shorn the curling, frilled tip of one of her ears off completely until it was almost rounded. Almost mortal, and she wondered if such a thing would even grow back, wondered if she was allowed to ask. If she could even breathe in this room without upsetting things further, ruining the delicate featherfall that she had thrust them into with her own selfish carelessness. She pulled things apart without lifting a finger, how could she be expected to handle the tumbled sea glass that she’d all but discovered?

Where did she even start?

“I-”

Low inhale, a long sigh, Darcy’s fingers twisted and bunched in the blanket. 

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

The quiet admittance felt like a slap, battered nerves and all, Wanda blinked wide eyes at Darcy where she sat. Where she stared, refused to look away, like this was some sort of competition or struggle for dominance that Wanda hadn’t been informed of. Carefully bandaged cuts across her cheeks and jaw where that muzzle had bit deep, she shouldn’t have been allowed to look beautiful even here. And yet, Wanda would have expected nothing else. 

“I had to.” A scoff for her false start and she stumbled forward a step, could take rejection even if it killed her but she needed to find her feet enough to even speak. None of it would matter if Darcy didn’t want to listen, and she tasted her heart in her throat as the other woman held her gaze with a blink. “I needed to, God, Darcy, I had to see you. I was horrible, and I scared you, I  _ hurt _ you, I couldn’t leave us like that.”

She looked so small in that bed, delicate little painted porcelain doll with her dark curls and her luminous eyes. Too sharp teeth that peeked out from behind her burgundy lips, she was a creature that Wanda didn’t understand, but she knew the stories that her mother used to tell.  _ Vila _ and  _ huldr _ and all sorts of otherworldly phantasms that shouldn’t have been real, but the woman on the bed said otherwise. The melodic rasp of her words spoke ocean floor depths as if to prove a point, Wanda had always trusted in Darcy even if she didn’t trust herself. 

“I love you.”

Those eyes blew wide, that mouth fell to a loose lipped gap and she felt empowered with it, wanted to kiss those teeth that would certainly cut her. 

“Wan-”

“I love you so much,  _ moja lutka _ , and I’ve never been more terrified in my life. I don’t understand any of this, and I didn’t let you explain and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I don’t know what to do because I know I can’t, I don’t want, please don’t make m-”

Gentle shushing, a hand held out to her and her heart fluttered wild in the coral reef cage of her ribs. 

“What do you need?”

Careful, softly spoken and affectionate like she didn’t deserve, dare she say loving where she had done her best to ruin them. She wanted to burrow into that offering, take whatever Darcy thought her worthy enough of and clutch it to her chest. 

“Can you sing to me?”

Wet bubble like a sob, exhausted from a lack of sleep and stress that she couldn’t seem to chase from her bones, her breath sounded like the lost bubble bursts from the deep end of a pool. Like she could drown in her lungs, and Wanda stumbled forward, their fingers catching and curling as Darcy held onto her. Gave her something steady to anchor herself to as her heart screamed and her face grew wet with tears. She hadn’t cried since the conservatory, since she’d done her best to set them on fire with her own foolish behavior, but Darcy just took her in hand and sighed. 

Smiled a soft, besotted smile and pulled her closer. 

“Always.”

Ocean wave break and tidal fizz, the sweet sweep of her voice sank into Wanda’s bones almost instantly. Cradled her as sun warmed shallows swelled from somewhere deep within and laced an ephemeral dose of champagne glazed dopamine until she sighed. Swayed and sank and breathed like she hadn’t without, and the world narrowed down to the sea froth gentle that pulled her down deep, loving and slow. 


End file.
